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The social model of disability and its application to dentistry

6 mins read Special care dentistry
People with disabilities are potentially one of the most marginalised groups in our society. What this series of papers aims to do is to raise awareness about disability. The first paper will discuss the social model of disability, its importance for people with disabilities and its application to d

The social model of disability is not really a model; it is a way of thinking about disability. To begin with, what do you think of in terms of images when the word disability is mentioned? When asked, the majority of people will say someone in a wheelchair. Very few would say someone with a learning difficulty. This is because the way society asks us to think about disability usually revolves around what people cannot do, or stereotypical images such as in Figures 1 and 2. This way of thinking is usually described as ableism, because it is done by people without impairments in a society that revolves around an idea of normality or the norm (Chouinard 1997; Campbell 2001, 2009).

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